There are a handful of skate parks built from recycled materials these days, but generally, these massive concrete installations have been as environmentally friendly as golf courses.  The Ed Benedict Skate Park in Portland, Oregon is trying to revise that image by managing storm water run-off more responsibly, absorbing it through integrated ‘biofiltration islands’ that have been incorporated as design elements.

An event this Saturday on Staten Island invites artists to bring leftover ideas and pieces of work to an afternoon of collaborative dada production.  Day de Dada is August 1st from 1:00 to 4:00 on Van Duzer Street between Wright and Beach Streets, Staten Island. 

It’s increasingly rare to come across new, untouched land for park development in cities. In the May issue of Landscape Architecture, Peter Harnik explains how “squeezing innovative green spaces into crowded cities requires looking for land in unexpected places.”  He outlines the potential of a variety of urban spaces to function as parkland: cemeteries, school yards, rooftops, community gardens, reservoir lands, stormwater channels, closed streets and reclaimed parking areas.  

Open and on view for one more week at The Sculpture Center in Long Island City, Queens is The University of Trash, an installation by artists Michael Cataldi and Nils Norman that functions as the backdrop for a host of lectures, workshops and events. 

Two recent efforts at sharing private green space: Hyperlocavore is an online ‘yardsharing’ forum that facilitates sharing of residential yard space, skills and resources for the collaborative tending of gardens and urban farms;  Community Supported Forestry is Roald Gunderson and Amelia Baxter’s attempt to build a member base for their 140-acre Vermont forest; membership is $550 for a year’s worth of unlimited recreational access, select access to forest harvests like wild mushrooms and sustainable lumber, and member workshops on topics like beer brewing, beekeeping and natural architecture.

The Bronx River Art Center‘s new exhibit features work by Staten Island-based artist Tattfoo Tan and Bronx-based artist Abigail DeVille.  The show is called Black Gold, a term that’s often used to describe compost, and the work–painting, sculpture, installation–circles around issues concerning the natural environment. 

We really enjoyed last Friday’s tour of the green roof atop the Parks Department’s Five Borough Technical Services Complex.  The roof is gorgeous and inspiring, and it’s worth checking out our flickr photos (and videos) of the tour if you weren’t able to make it. 

Researchers at MIT’s SENSEable City Lab have just launched Trash Track, a project that attaches tags to various pieces of garbage to electronically track their real-time movement through the city.  The goal is to “reveal the disposal process of our everyday objects and waste, as well as to highlight potential inefficiencies in today’s recycling and sanitation systems.” 

Starting January 1, Washington D.C. will be taxing shoppers 5 cents for every disposable paper or plastic bag in an effort to encourage bag reuse.  The tax revenue will go toward cleaning up the District’s Anacostia River.  The move follows San Francisco’s full-on ban of plastic shopping bags and L.A.’s

This Saturday is the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance’s City of Water Day, a festival celebrating the potential of the City’s waterfront.  There will be plenty of free entertainment, education and activities, including boat tours, local bands, award-winning food vendors and lots of special children’s events.

Metropolis Magazine‘s 2009 Next Generation design competition asked entrants to “fix our energy addiction” at any scale and through any design specialty.  From 197 ent­ries, the winner was a proposal to integrate wind turbines into existing power transmission towers. 

Anne Schwartz’s recent column in the Gotham Gazette lays out some pretty impressive figures identifying city parks as economic assets: Central Park contributed $1 billion to the city’s economy in 2007; the High Line is expected to generate $4 billion in private investment and $900 million in revenues to the city over the next 30 years; the 2008 completion of the Greenwich Village section of the Hudson River Park raised real estate prices in the adjacent two blocks by 20 percent. 

The Obama Administration is reportedly considering a program called “Shrink to Survive,” which would selectively bulldoze blocks of abandoned real estate in 50 economically depressed US cities and replace them with parks, forest and meadows. The plan is based on a downsizing scheme in Flint, Michigan–once the home of General Motors–where citizens are already advocating the use of vacant lots as community gardens. 

[youtube youtube.com/watch?v=1fITT6rVPds&w=507&h=370]

We’ve been linking to Colin Beaven’s No Impact Man blog for a while now.  The No Impact project, and others like it, are appealing to us because they’re at least partly about assuaging the massive environmental guilt (or owning up to the responsibility, if you slice it that way) that comes with fuller understanding of our effect on the world around us. 

For our Freshkills Park Talk two weeks back, Dr. Steven Handel shared insights into the emerging field of urban restoration ecology, which focuses on the challenge of bringing ecological diversity back to degraded lands like brownfields and landfills.  He discussed his research at the Freshkills Park site and others in the region and went on to describe how his expertise has informed the design of Orange County, CA’s Great Park.

Next Friday, we’ll be taking a field trip to visit the green roof at the Parks Department’s Five Borough Technical Services Complex on Randall’s Island.  This is no ordinary green roof–it’s the fourth largest in New York City (at over 15,000 sq ft) and uses 13 different green roof systems.  

More on the mind-boggling Great Pacific Garbage Patch: it’s now the object of a grail quest across the ocean.  Scientists from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation and videographer Drew Wheeler have set sail on a two month voyage to study and sample the Patch and document its impact on marine wildlife. 

Another constructed wetland system, this time at the Sidwell Friend’s School in Washington D.C.  The Wetland Machine by Andropogon Associates, Kieran Timberlake Associates and Natural Systems International incorporates two self-contained systems to recycle water, one for wastewater and one for stormwater. 

According to Urban Ecologist Robert DeCandido, 60% of native plant species ever recorded in the State of New York can currently be found in New York City–a statistic DeCandido attributes to the City’s large public parks.  Even so, populations of native species are shrinking in every borough except for Staten Island. 

Installation of composting toilets in public facilities is catching on.  In New York City, The Bronx Zoo and Queens Botanical Garden have been operating restrooms with composting toilets, with no need for sewer lines, for the last few years.   The technology in both facilities is made by Clivus Multrum and resembles a conventional toilet, except that it uses only 3-6 ounces of water, in combination with a bio-compostable foam, for flushing.